Mortality

Wikipedia disambiguation page

As though he were to see a corpse thrown aside in a charnel ground, one, two, or three days dead, bloated, livid, and oozing matter, a bhikkhu compares this same body with it thus: 'This body too is of the same nature, it will be like that, it is not exempt from that fate. ~ Gautama Buddha

The ungodly ... reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves,... we were born by mere chance, and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been. ... Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray, ... for God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity. ~ Solomon

Contents

Again, bhikkhus, as though he were to see a corpse thrown aside in a charnel ground, one, two, or three days dead, bloated, livid, and oozing matter, a bhikkhu compares this same body with it thus: 'This body too is of the same nature, it will be like that, it is not exempt from that fate.'

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.

All our dignity consists then in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavor to think well; this is the principle of morality.

At thirty, man suspects himself a fool,
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty, chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve,
In all the magnanimity of thought;
Resolves, and re-resolves, then dies the same.
And why? because he thinks himself immortal,
All men think all men mortal but themselves.

The immortal could we cease to contemplate,
The mortal part suggests its every trait.
God laid His fingers on the ivories
Of her pure members as on smoothèd keys,
And there out-breathed her spirit's harmonies.

Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard", line 36, The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray, ed. H. W. Starr and J. R. Hendrickson, p. 38 (1966). Originally published in 1751. "Nobody knew that [Major General James] Wolfe, reciting Gray's Elegy in 1759 as he rowed up the St. Lawrence [to Quebec] the night before his death, said that 'he would prefer being the author of that poem to the glory of beating the French tomorrow,' until in 1815, in Vol. VII of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, appeared a biography of its secretary, John Robison, LL. D., professor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, who as a young man had been a midshipman in Wolfe's flotilla".—Carroll A. Wilson, "Familiar 'Small College' Quotations, II: Mark Hopkins and the Log", The Colophon, spring 1938, p. 204.

Don't strew me with roses after I'm dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow,
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away". How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride!—how consoling in the depth of affliction!

Abraham Lincoln, address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 30, 1859; in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. 3, p. 481–82. Many versions of this story exist. Another one is: "The Sultan asked for a Signet motto, that should hold good for Adversity or Prosperity. Solomon gave him, 'This also shall pass away.'"—Edward Fitzgerald, Polonius: A Collection of Wise Saws and Modern Instances, item 112, p. 80 (1901). The words In neez bogzarad, which can be translated, "This also shall pass", appear in the Diven of the twelfth century Persian poet and philosopher, Sana' of Ghazn, ed. Mahir Muaffa, p. 92 (1957).

Above all, Hubert was a man with a good heart. And on this sad day it would be good for us to recall Shakespeare's words:

A good leg will fall. A straight back will stoop. A black beard will turn white. A curled pate will grow bald. A fair face will wither. A full eye will wax hollow. But a good heart is the sun and the moon. Or rather the sun and not the moon, for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps its course truly. He taught us all how to hope and how to live, how to win and how to lose, he taught us how to live, and finally, he taught us how to die.

Walter Mondale, eulogy for former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, January 15, 1978, in the rotunda of the Capitol.—The Washington Post, January 16, 1978, p. 1. The Shakespeare quotation is a slight variation from Henry V, act V, scene ii.

Philip, remember that thou art mortal.

Author unknown. Supposedly, words Philip of Macedon had a servant repeat in the audience-room. Reported in Samuel A. Bent, Short Sayings of Great Men (1882), p. 437. Similarly, "Remember thou, too, art a man". Words a slave would be bidden to whisper now and again to the triumphal conqueror returning in state to Rome. John L. Stoddard, Lectures, vol. 8 (1911), p. 263–64.